Delegations from across the globe regularly land at Ben-Gurion Airport with a singular mission: to study the "Israeli Miracle" of healthcare. From our world-leading response to the COVID-19 pandemic to our highly digitized community clinics, the world wants to know how Israel achieves one of the highest life expectancies in the world (83.8 years) while maintaining one of the most efficient price-performance ratios in the OECD (7.2% of GDP compared to an average of 10.2%).
Yet, when it comes to our education system, the silence from the international community is deafening. No one is flying here to study our middle-school math scores or our bloated pedagogical bureaucracy. For the "People of the Book," the irony is painful: we have mastered the science of keeping our citizens healthy, but we are failing the system that is supposed to keep them wise.
The reason the world studies our healthcare isn't an accident of history. It is the result of a radical, structural transformation led by Haim Ramon between 1992 and 1995. Before the National Health Insurance Law, the system was fragmented and inefficient. The radical reform shifted the state’s role from a clunky provider to a powerful regulator. It created a system in which four competing HMOs (Kupot Cholim) were given autonomy to manage their own budgets, innovate, and compete for members, while the Ministry of Health ensured universal standards and funding.
The results speak for themselves. In healthcare, the Israeli model is a global gold standard for efficiency. In education, however, we are still living in the pre-1995 era of centralized stagnation.
While the healthcare system thrived on competition and decentralization, the Ministry of Education has spent the last twenty years doubling down on the "centralization trap". Despite tripling the education budget in two decades and introducing various reforms targeting teacher salaries and STEM education, our PISA scores remain markedly low and are in decline. Furthermore, the gap between the periphery and the center continues to widen.
The education system remains a rigid, top-down hierarchy in which the Ministry micromanages every pencil and every teacher’s timetable from Metula to Eilat. In healthcare, we trust doctors with our patients; in education, we don’t trust principals and teachers with our students.
If we want a world-class education system, we must apply the lessons of 1995. We need a fundamental pivot from a Managerial State to a Regulatory State. This means radical decentralization, empowering school principals to act as the CEOs of their schools. They must be given the flexibility to:
- Hire and fire based on merit, moving past the archaic seniority-based pay scales that protect mediocrity.
- Manage autonomous budgets, allowing schools to tailor their resources to the specific needs of their unique student populations.
- Innovate curriculum, while the Ministry focuses on its true job: setting national standards and testing for results.
The 1995 healthcare reform was not a "win-win." It was a fierce political battle that required immense political will to overcome entrenched interests. A similar move toward educational decentralization will trigger a political firestorm. The unions will strike, the headlines will be heated, and the leadership will be branded as "heartless."
But let us look at the choice before us. We can continue down the path of least resistance buying industrial quiet today while presiding over the slow decay of our national human capital. Or, we can choose the harder road not taken, weathering a few difficult months of disputes to build a system that is finally worthy of the Jewish state and the proven resilience of its people.
The "post-war window" of 2026 is a unique moment where the public understands that the old, centralized ways are no longer sufficient. History does not remember the leaders who kept the ball rolling in a broken system; it remembers those who had the courage to tackle the status quo and rebuild.
Reuven Taub is the Co-founder and CEO of “Alenu – the Founding Grandchildren”